Abstract Summary
Coral restoration is gaining momentum globally in response to stressors such as bleaching and disease. Along with restoring threatened species and ecological condition of reefs, there is growing interest from a variety of sectors for restoration that supports specific social benefits (e.g., tourism). This has implications for restoration as site selection will vary substantially as we prioritize different benefits. Ecological parameters such as bathymetry, historic distribution and abundance, temperature and light conditions are important for maximizing the likelihood of survival and growth of out-planted corals. Additional factors come into play when selecting sites specifically to return benefits like wave attenuation, local fisheries, or tourism. Global and regional-scale models that predict the spatial availability of such social benefits have been developed for different geographies through the Mapping Ocean Wealth initiative, an ongoing effort to develop spatially-explicit and quantitative data on a range of ecosystem benefits for a range of habitat types. This information is increasingly high-resolution, and innovative new tools are being developed in tandem to enable environmental managers to predict the changes in societal benefits that could be associated with reef loss or reef recovery in specific locations. Resource constraints in the conservation and management community demand smart investments, and the return on investment is an important consideration for both policy makers and business leaders of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations alike. Spatially-explicit models that link various coral reef attributes (location, vertical relief, coral cover) to social can be used to assess return on investment (ROI) and other socially-relevant metrics under different scales and timeframes of restoration investment. These models can also be used to test assumptions and trade-offs among different management actions. For example, maps of fishing impact and fish biomass in Micronesia allow the comparison of the increases in standing stocks from reducing fishing versus increasing coral cover in any 1 ha reef area in the region, and potentially the ROI of each management action. Looking forward, we suggest that analysis of social benefits and potential tradeoffs can attract new restoration investment that supports multiple objectives and outcomes.
